There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you're the only person in the room

It's far too easy to suggest that a good book is something to come home to. That the characters of this cleverly crafted piece, now family, illicit the raw emotion and like minded comfort that home breeds. I've scoffed at the notion, and still I've found myself cradling Francie Nolan, trudging through the snow banked army camp with Joe Kavelier, and begging Beloved to stay. There is a militia of books I've re-read, and too many that prompt silent stuper. They are the reason for reading, as if the writer had included an afterword, in invisible ink, that said, "I know..."

But good literature should do just that. It should envelope the reader so much so that we're convinced this piece was written for no one else. Or, in taking on a different tack, it should convince the reader that there is something so much more out there. It prompts introspection, choice reflection and a 'where am I going/where have I been?' freak out of the mind.

After having read a slew of good, great, wonderful books (that I sadly haven't reviewed) I thought of the reads I refer to as my most favorite. The Bell Jar immediately came to mind, and while I hadn't read it in a good five years I became obsessed with its opening line.
How the hell did that book open?
And because I'd lost a good lot of my library in my many moves I had to run out to the Borders and find out.

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenburgs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers-goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.

I thought it must be the worst thing in the world."

Hot damn! Now we're cooking with gas. The opening alone evokes the essence that is the main character Ester Greenwood. Aside from those two power packed sentences relaying the isolation, paranoia, bitterness, setting and capacity of our main character, they are also beautifully drafted lines of prose.

I've always been one for over extended, lengthy sentences when composed in such a fashion that they leave the reader gaping. I'm surprised Plath opened in this respect, as she is typically prone to more concise, rhythmic lines. That may be the beauty that is "The Bell Jar". It reads like a novel. It moves along, in chronological order with the seamlessly transitioned flashback like a novel, but its prose is so fluid, and its characters internal responses so lovely that at times I swore it was an epic poem.

"A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife."

Surely this book isn't for everyone. Plath makes no concessions about crafting a mostly internal novel that acts as a confessional for main character Ester. It was published initially under an alias as Plath was embarrassed that it would be mocked as a serious piece of literature, however the fluid language, the engaging characters and knock me down memorible internal conflicts of our narrarator certainly station this book in a league of its own. Plath should also be noted for her mostly layered (although, at times obvious) allegories, metaphors and symbols splayed throughout the text. The obvious tie to electrocution isn't beaten to death. Ester's madness is played pragmatically, where, at times, I felt nothing but a cool, calm distance toward the character, and at others, when the Plath language deepens, an intense rush of empathy, concern and like minded insanity.

I appreciate that this isn't the story of Ester's apotheosis. The shock treatments aren't regaeled as a cure-all. Even more Plath doesn't copy the post-modern doctrine of story for story's sake or a Chekovian plot less puddle of something happened. Rather, she tells a story and allows the reader to infer its conclusion. In so doing so also allows the reader to create its introduction, and, upon 2nd, 3rd, and 4th reading, I've found that I've made Ester into something completely different upon each read. She is malleable, as a character. She may be deemed helpless. She can become a pawn or a brat or a Yellow Wallpaper'ed victim. I love that she changes with my changed scenery and Plath executes her camelion status perfectly.

I could quote almost all of this book and claim every line as my favorite, but I'll conclude with what I consider to be the most fitting sentiment to the author,
"Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones."

4 out of 4 Hula Hoops.
I could twist and turn forever with this one.